Posted on 07/31/2006 4:23:47 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
BETRAYING SPINOZA: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity By Rebecca Goldstein Schocken, 287 pages $19.95
WITH most people, if they know anything about the philosopher Benedic tus Spinoza, it's his sensational-sounding excommunication by the Amsterdam Jewish community in 1656 at age 24. But Jewish-style excommunication sounds more awesome than it was. Its impact was merely social. Until the excommunicated person changed his ways, other Jews were forbidden to communicate with him.
In her fascinating and highly accessible new biography, part of the Jewish Encounters series, novelist Rebecca Goldstein brings out a much more interesting but lesser known truth about Spinoza. Arguably, he was the founder of modern secularism.
Defined as the idea that Biblical religion should be kept strictly sequestered from most or all public life, secularism may be viewed as the official philosophy of America's social and educational elite. And Goldstein is all for it.
Hence her admiration for Spinoza, who formulated a belief system casting doubt on the Torah's divine authorship and its authority to define right and wrong. He denied that God is transcendent, but rather defined the deity as embodied logic, the necessary working out of the only way, according to that logic, the world could have unfolded.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Ping
I thought they got it from Ayn Rand.
True, but the point is that all non-Theistic moralists are followers of Spinoza.
Ayn Rand was scary. That she has followers is even scarier.
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